Homemade Lego Advent Calendar 2015: Day 3 - Neon Butterfly Drone

The story behind the Homemade Lego Advent Calendar: We opted not to buy the Dude a Lego Advent Calendar for the past few years. The Dude was quite amenable, countering with: "Ok, then you have to build me something every day until Christmas." Challenge accepted! This is the series of daily posts, cataloguing my builds.UPDATE: The Dude decided that this looks like a drone; so it has since been rebranded :)

Maybe it's because the weather is turning, but I really wanted to make a Lego butterfly today. After playing around with a bunch of ideas, I decided to go for a symmetrical neon look.

If you have eagle eyes, you might notice that the wings are attached to the body on hinges, so you can re-position them. Without this feature, it would have had almost a 2-D quality - flat, straight wings coming off the body. The hinges actually really make the design: by being able to angle the wings, it really looks more like an actual butterfly.

It's about 4 inches long and rests nicely in my palm. The first photo is almost at scale but I think It looks so much better IRL. I find that this build doesn't photograph very well so you'll have to take my word for it :)